The National Fatwa Council’s chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, said on Saturday many Muslims fail to understand that yoga’s ultimate aim is to be one with a god of a different religion — an explanation disputed by many practitioners who say yoga need not have a religious element.

There must be something in the water over there in Malaysia. First, it was “Non-muslims can’t use the word ‘Allah’ as a synonym for ‘God’ because Muslims might get confused.” Then it was “girls shouldn’t act like boys because it violates Islamic tenets; the sub-text probably being that Muslims might get confused. And now, yoga. Maybe next they’ll ban environmentalism because Muslims might confuse their priorities and not be able to discern whether the environment is more important than Allah.

For the record (and because I don’t want to get my head chopped off), I don’t think that Muslims are stupid. I think that some Muslims might be tho. And it worries me that it’s the stupid ones who seem to get to make the rules.